Jennifer Wells - Beyond the Stars - At Galaxy's Edge

So, anytime one pisses me off, I slap it over. The little Q-berts are about four and a half feet tall, so their hair is eye level and above for me. They are damned dense, so they believe they have the right of way because they are so heavy and hard to move for a lot of species. Their three legs can move them pretty fast.

I’m only five foot four inches, but my nanite-enhanced body can kick the shit out of a Q-bert when I’m pissed. Which is normally anytime they get in my way and babble at me to leave their presence. I tell them, once they land after I kick them, that I’m not in their immediate presence any longer.

One time I had a green Q-bert crawl back out of the trashcan I had just kicked him into. He yelled at me to stand still, so I did. I waited patiently for him to pull off the rotten vegetables and drop them on the sidewalk outside the restaurant I had just left. He turned, lowered his head (and his fancy hair) and started running towards me.

He became a Q-bert kickball, two points for kicking him into the same can once more. Then, stupid ass pulls himself out of the garbage and cleans himself yet again. I had plenty of time to decide whether to kick him or not and decided, this time, I was just dense. So, he comes charging, and I jumped over his ass. When I landed, I turned to watch him continue another ten feet and headbutt a perma-crete wall. The crack could be heard down the alley. I watched as he toppled over and lay prone on the ground.

Perma-crete one, hardheaded Q-bert zero.

I tell you this because while the bar was pretty empty when I got there, two drinks later a Q-bert comes walking in with that Alpha walk that says he is hot shit. I started looking around for a large enough trashcan to use for my goal and found nothing.

Damn.

>>Achronyx, message the owner of Rossini’s bar and provide him a hundred credits. Put damages as the memo for the credit transfer.<<

>>Yes, Tabitha.<<

I waited and took a sip from my drink when a message came up. I turned on the viewer that displayed my messages directly to my eye. Huh, the owner of Rossini’s was named Billet. Nice. I love names I can pronounce. It saves me and them a lot of heartache.

Me because I can pronounce them, them because I don’t change it to something I can pronounce. There are a lot of alien species that get pretty pissy about name pronunciation. I try to tell them that I failed that class (true), and a human’s vocal cords aren’t really designed to handle some languages. (Also true, but I have mods that allow me to deal with them all, I just choose not to.)

Remember, when you want to criticize me for my bad attitude that I’ve had a hundred and fifty years of dealing with sucky situations in localities that are piss poor. I’ve done this while you were probably sitting on your couch eating those damned bonbons. So, kiss my ass about being politically correct.

Both cheeks.

Hey, they are South American ass cheeks, so at least you got something to kiss, sweetheart.

I read the owner’s message back to me. Billet wanted to know why I was sending credits for messing up a bar that wasn’t damaged at the moment. I replied that there was a Queegert in his place that was about to get the shit kicked out of him, and it was definitely going to mess up some of his furniture. So, unless he built the furniture pretty damned solid, it was going to break.

He told me he was watching the security video. I turned and looked up over my right shoulder at the security camera and smiled, then flipped it off.

I have proper manners like that.

Sure as shit, Q-bert walks over, “You are at my table.” Its great eye peering at me, slightly yellow. I was probably no more at his table than if I had chosen the next one over.

“Bullshit,” I told him. The interesting thing about Q-berts is they really don’t have much bluff in them, and you can read their feelings on their face.

Like, pissed off and excited.

“Name?” I asked it. Another trait of Q-berts is they usually will have a discussion with you before they kick your ass. They aren’t stupid, but occasionally how thoroughly they consider a situation makes a lot of beings think them slow.

“Donaai,” he told me, “you have until I beat you senseless to get out of that chair.”

“Wow, Donald, not much on options, are you?” I asked and stood up, pulling my coat away from my pistol. He looked down and noticed the gun.

“What? You would use something as barbaric as a pistol instead of your arms?” he sneered at me.

Hey, I’d say the same thing in his place. The pistol I use is rare, and most beings haven’t seen one. Those that have usually don’t forget them. However, many have heard descriptions, and there have been a ton of knockoffs. So many that everyone questions what’s real anymore.

Fucking barbarians.

I answered him while stepping a little to the side and planting my left foot in a solid position. “I’m going to give you exactly zero chances to be wise and only one warning. My name is Tabitha. No last name. This is a Duke’s Ranger Special. While I could pull it and make your future a non-event, I’ve already paid the bar owner a hundred credits for the damage I’m about to cause.”

As Donald was working through everything I just told him, I put my hat down on the table and flipped off the camera again. I acted like I was scratching the back of my head.

I’m subtle that way.

It became obvious Donald had arrived at the conclusion I meant to go toe-to-toe with him instead of shooting his ass. When his eye opened perceptibly, I lashed out with my size sevens and kicked his heavy ass through the table behind him to slam into the bar, knocking off four bottles of booze that crashed to the ground.

That was going to suck to clean up. “Not paying for the booze!” I yelled over my shoulder and walked toward the busted table as Donald was trying to get himself standing again. I pulled my necklace out from under my shirt. Then, I yanked my pistol and stuck the tip on his forehead beneath his hair and bent down to stare into his great eye. “So, I kicked your ass across the floor, busted a table, four bottles of booze I’m not paying for, and I figure I probably have another forty credits on my tab. Am I using that money to pay someone to drag your dead ass out of here, or am I using it to buy you and me a couple of drinks while you answer questions from a Queen’s Ranger?”

At that point, he glanced at my chest. Not because my tits impress him, although it is a nice rack, rather because my badge glittered on its chain hanging from my neck. It’s a death sentence to have a fake Ranger badge.

You can try to scam people with fake Ranger pistols, but our badges are fucking sacrosanct. The only time we come together as a group is when we hear about someone trying to fake being a Ranger. We’ve been known to lay waste to places when that happens.

Nobody pretends to be a Queen’s Ranger and gets away with it.

“Number?” he asked me, staring at the badge.

“Two,” I supplied.

If you know much about Rangers, you know the importance of our number. My boss, Barnabas, is One. I followed him quickly into the group and became number Two. Unfortunately, Three was killed, and Four and Five are both in retirement. Six died of natural causes. Well, let’s just say not duty related causes. Sticking his personal fun stick in the wrong woman caused his girl to go all sorts of ballistic on him.

Queen’s Rangers might be pretty damned indestructible, but make an ass out of your woman and give her a fair amount of time and she will figure out your Achilles heel, and there goes your chance for a long life.

So, the next number still running and gunning is Seven. I saw him last year passing through the Menoah Space Station. We had drinks and talked old times until the bar closed down. Good times.